John van Soerland to lead MEMS foundry Xiver

With his appointment as managing director of Xiver, John van Soerland returns to his semiconductor roots. He began his career in 1983 as an intern at Philips Audio and CFT and then climbed the ranks at Philips Semiconductors and Display Components. Subsequently, he spent three more years as a board member and general manager at NXP, where he was responsible for the semiconductor fabs in Nijmegen and led the transition to the ICN organization.

In 2009, Van Soerland returned to Philips and became responsible for Healthcare in Best. Ten years later, he made the move to VDL, where he was appointed a member of the board of directors. Willem van der Leegte also asked him to prepare VDL Nedcar for the departure of major client BMW, an effort that ultimately didn’t succeed. Recently, as a special advisor, Van Soerland has become part of Xiver’s transition team, which is preparing to spin off Philips’ MEMS foundry.

Van Soerland is a born factory man with a great passion for manufacturing processes and decades of experience in leading large-scale fabs. His experience at Philips Semiconductors, NXP and Philips Healthcare will certainly come in handy. Xiver expects to successfully complete the deal in January. The final details are currently being worked out.

The big challenge facing Van Soerland and his team is the execution of the growth strategy. Despite the deplorable state of the European semiconductor industry, Xiver sees a favorable starting position for itself. It will soon be the only independent MEMS foundry on our continent that isn’t Chinese-owned, with a diverse customer base within the European automotive, industrial and medical sectors. Especially in the field of ultrasound technology, it thinks it can distinguish itself thanks to years of development and collaborations with leading partners. Xiver isn’t your typical MEMS foundry; it has its own portfolio of intellectual property, including designs.

The automotive industry still produces and assembles many MEMS sensors in Europe, and Dutch semicon companies are known worldwide as leaders. Moreover, there are a lot of European medical startups that can turn to Xiver not only for production but also for part of their sensor and actuator designs.